You are releasing a new product or service and want to market it using social media. It is not difficult, provided that you follow the steps to grafting a successful strategy. A social media marketing campaign strategy is a summary of the plans and steps from the start to the finish of the campaign. The more specific the plan, the more effective the outcome.
The set goals and strategy should be aligned with your business objectives. Try these,
● Set SMART goals
The first step is recognizing and establishing your goals. If goals are not defined well, you will have no way to measure success and ROI. SMART goals will be,
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Relevant
Time-bound
These SMART goals will ensure they lead to successful business results. The number of followers, likes, engagement rate, click-through, and conversion rates are metrics that you need to track. The need may be to track different metrics for different campaigns or projects. These goals should always align with your marketing objectives.
● Learn and understand your audience.
You will need to know what the audience wants to see and who they are. With this research, you will be empowered to create content viewers will like, comment on and share. This will increase user engagement and increase followers. Understanding and analyzing user demographics will reveal details like,
Age
Location
Income
Industry
Interests
Once you get to know your target audience, you will know how to target them on social media and engage them. Gathering data goes a long way. Social media analytics can provide a lot of information about these above-listed details.
Know the competition
Most of your brand competitors are already using social media, and you can know a lot by researching what they are doing. By conducting a competitive analysis, you will get a detailed view of your competition and their social media marketing successes and failures. This will help you understand the opportunities and untapped areas.
Social media listening is another way to keep an eye on the competition. It is based on finding out what they are sharing and what other people are saying. There are some listening stream applications available to monitor the same.
● Auditing your social media account
Your social media accounts will tell you a lot about your social media efforts so far. You will be faced with these questions to which you will need answers,
What works?
Who is engaging with your posts?
What platforms do your target audience use?
How does your social media presence compare to other competitors?
Once you get answers you can improve. Your audit will give you a clear picture of your social media accounts and help you in ways more than one.
You might have revelations on fake accounts using your brand image to their advantage. Though these imposters are harmful they will have followers that land in your target segment. Deal with them and absorb the followers.
● Setup and improve your profiles
Once you have decided what platform or platforms you want to use, each of the platforms will need to have a campaign strategy. Your profiles should reflect your brand image and have a consistent approach across all platforms in terms of look, color scheme, and style. All profile fields need to be filled up and appropriate keywords used for showing up on search strings.
Use high-quality content be it pictures, videos, or written posts. It is always advisable to use fewer channels to keep the content crisp and strategy streamlined.
● Find Inspiration
Your campaign needs to be unique for maximum benefits but you will need to draw a certain level of inspiration from others. The other brands’ social media success stories, award-winning campaigns, etc. will give you lots of examples to derive inspiration from while coming up with your unique plan.
Check your favorite brands on social media. See what they post and how they engage their followers. You can also ask your followers what they would be happy to use. You can see from their engagements what they are talking about. You can learn a lot from their needs and desires.
● Create a calendar
Sharing of good quality content is needed and also at the correct time. Chalking out a timetable for the sharing of content is also essential to get maximum benefits. This should ideally also account for the time spent interacting with your customers online on social media.
With a predetermined posting schedule you have the advantage of utilizing the best time for your campaign and also spacing out the posts be it on a daily basis at particular times during the day or on specific days even maybe a time or festival during a month in a year.
● Evaluate and optimize
As you start the campaign and go ahead with implementing your plan you will need to track your results. After tracking, you will need to analyze and evaluate the results. It might be reflected that some part or strategy did not go as planned, and at the same time another one may have worked better than expected.
The weak links need to be optimized and you could redirect the resources to the successful part of the campaign. Then re-evaluate again and re-optimize. This needs to be consistently done in a cycle for the best results.
The above guidelines will let you plan and strategize, and treat your campaign strategy like a living document that is reviewable and adjustable as per the requirements. Refer to your social media marketing campaign strategy as a workflow, but do not be afraid to make changes when and where you need them to adjust your goals and attain a better strategy
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